That evening, Travis told Ned and Pam they had to leave. They checked into a cheap motel. Sitting on a scratchy, overwashed comforter on the edge of the bed, Pam breathed slowly and talked to her baby. “Hold off. Until we sign that lease, just hold off.” The baby didn’t listen. Pam’s water broke, and an older woman staying at the motel gave her, Ned, and Kristin a ride to the hospital. The baby weighed seven pounds, ten ounces. Ned thought she was big for a girl. “That’s proof that cigarette smoking doesn’t cause low birth weight.” He laughed. They stayed in the hospital for two nights, on doctor’s orders, being charged for a motel room they were using only to hold their things.
Four days after the baby came, Belt Buckle called and told Pam and Ned that their application had been approved. Pam had two evictions on her record, was a convicted felon, and received welfare. Ned had an outstanding warrant, no verifiable income, and a long record that included three evictions, felony drug convictions, and several misdemeanors like reckless driving and carrying a concealed weapon. They had five daughters. But they were white.
Pam would have preferred the Packard Avenue apartment. Even if it was smaller, it was in Cudahy. But that landlord had said no. Their eviction and conviction records pushed them out of white neighborhoods and into an area that families living on the North Side dreamed of moving to.
Ned squandered it. Three days after moving in, he got into a drunken altercation with the upstairs neighbors. The landlord gave them a week to find a new place. That was all the time they needed. Ned found a clean two-bedroom apartment in a working-class white area near Dirky’s garage, going for $645. It had a pear tree out front. Ned applied by himself, leaving Pam and her two black daughters off the lease. “People like single dads,” he told Pam. The landlord approved him.
“The landlord doesn’t know about me or the two girls?” Pam asked.
“Nope, but give it some time. I had to get a house, and I got us this place in a week.” Ned raised his hands as if accepting applause. “See, good things happen to good people.”
Soon after moving in, a neighbor hooked Ned up with a construction job and Pam began working as a medical assistant. Ned told Bliss and Sandra to tell the landlord they didn’t live there, if she ever asked. He told them a lot of things, like: “You’re as stupid as your father” and “You’re a half-nigger snitch.” One day he got a kick out of getting all the girls to march around the house chanting, “White power!”
It emptied Pam out. She prayed it wouldn’t hurt the girls in the long run. She prayed for forgiveness, for being a failure of a mother. But she felt that circumstances bound her to Ned. “This is a bad life,” she told herself. “We aren’t doing crack, but we are still dealing with the same fucking shit….I’ve never been in a position to leave.” The best she could do was to tell her girls, when they were alone, that Ned was the devil. Some nights, before she fell asleep, Pam wondered if she should take her girls to a homeless shelter or under the viaduct. “As long as we’re together and we’re happy and positive things are said. And I just want to tell them that they’re beautiful, ’cause my girls are the strongest little women in the world.”
—
Arleen tried a large apartment complex on Silver Spring Drive. (Ali, Number 88, never called back.) She dialed the number, and the building manager agreed to show her a unit on the spot.
“We home Jafaris!” Jori yelled, smiling.
“Don’t tell him that,” Arleen said.
“This is our home, man!” Jori joked again, elbowing his brother.
“Stop sayin’ that!” This time, Arleen yelled it imploringly.
After another showing, another application, they were back on the sidewalk.
“I’m hungry,” Jafaris said.
“Shut up, Jafaris!” Arleen snapped.
After a few minutes, Arleen dug in her pocket, found enough change, and stopped by McDonald’s to buy Jafaris some fries.
Near the end of the day, Arleen and the boys made their way to their old place on Thirteenth Street. Arleen had left a pair of shoes there. As they approached the house, they saw Little outside in the snow, pawing at the door. Jori and Jafaris ran to him. Jori picked up Little and handed him to Jafaris, who pulled him in and kissed him.
“Put it down, dang!” Arleen yelled. She jerked Jafaris’s arm back, and Little fell to the ground.
When Arleen was alone, she sometimes cried for Little. But she was teaching her sons to love small, to reject what they could not have. Arleen was protecting them, and herself. What other self-defense was there for a single mother who could not consistently provide for her children? If a poor father failed his family, he could leave the way Larry did, try again at some point down the road.11 Poor mothers—most of them, anyway—had to embrace this failure, to live with it.
Arleen’s children did not always have a home. They did not always have food. Arleen was not always able to offer them stability; stability cost too much. She was not always able to protect them from dangerous streets; those streets were her streets. Arleen sacrificed for her boys, fed them as best she could, clothed them with what she had. But when they wanted more than she could give, she had ways, some subtle, others not, of telling them they didn’t deserve it. When Jori wanted something most teenagers want, new shoes or a hair product, she would tell him he was selfish, or just bad. When Jafaris cried, Arleen sometimes yelled, “Damn, you hardheaded. Dry yo’ face up!” or “Stop it, Jafaris, before I beat yo’ ass! I’m tired of your bitch ass.” Sometimes, when he was hungry, Arleen would say, “Don’t be getting in the kitchen because I know you not hungry”; or would tell him to stay out of the barren cupboards because he was getting too fat.
You could only say “I’m sorry, I can’t” so many times before you began to feel worthless, edging closer to a breaking point. So you protected yourself, in a reflexive way, by finding ways to say “No, I won’t.” I cannot help you. So, I will find you unworthy of help.12
Ministers and church ladies, social workers and politicians, teachers and neighbors, police and parole officers throughout the black community would tell you that what you were doing was right, that what these young black boys and girls needed was a stern hand. Do not spare the rod. What began as survival carried forward in the name of culture.13
As they walked away from Thirteenth Street and Little and the detritus of their things still scattered in the snow, Jafaris opened his hand to reveal a pair of earrings.
“Where’d you get these from, Jafaris?” Arleen asked.
“Stole ’em from Crystal.”
“Oh, wow.” A pause, then: “That’s not funny, and it’s not nice, Jafaris. You hear what I’m saying?” Jafaris’s face fell. He just wanted to do something sweet for his momma. Arleen knew this and was touched. She would return the earrings later, but for the moment, she put them on. Jafaris smiled.
They had one more stop to make. As the sky grew inky blue and temperatures fell, Arleen met a white landlord in a flannel shirt and tool belt, fixing up a two-bedroom apartment with such haste and stress Arleen wondered if the inspector was coming the next day. She filled out an application, and Jafaris used the bathroom. It was too late when he discovered the toilet didn’t flush. Arleen thanked the landlord and, taking Jafaris by the hand, rushed out.
A few minutes later, her phone rang. “That was very rude!” the landlord was yelling. “And I don’t like children like that.”
Arleen and her boys could stay in the shelter for twenty-nine more days.
20.
NOBODY WANTS THE NORTH SIDE